Pier
by HouseaholicM
Summary: The only people around the Jersey pier tonight are a tall, handsome college kid and a pretty girl in a Michigan sweatshirt, staring at the stars. Huddy.


He watches her.

He sits in a nurse's chair at the reception desk of the clinic, dark except for the threads of light coming from her glowing glass office. He traces her movements like an artist on paper. With every reflex, the scene changes, like an old time movie flickering on a projection screen.

She doesn't know he's staring.

She pushes back that bothersome lock of hair and gently rubs her eyes. It's late. Finishing the weekly schedule, she turns off her computer and throws away a paper coffee cup, stained with lipstick. She begins to clear her desk for tomorrow when she sees a forgotten form staring up at her, lying there innocently, like a pet who has chewed up your favorite pair of shoes. She sighs.

He still watches.

He cherishes watching her at this time of night, watching her when her defenses are down, when she's finally relaxed. Her features are softer. The panic-driven, rigid expressions are no longer there. It's what she looks like after giving up: defeat. She stops rushing. It's a woman closer to the one he knew so many years ago. The night seems to bring out her trademark femininity, her submissive softness.

She hates this time of night.

It's not the dark or the long hours. It's just the fear of being alone long enough to start thinking, without the distractions that usually plague the afternoon hours. Pretty life is done for the day, and the imperfection of her brokenness rises to the surface. She'll find a bill from the fertility center; she'll see the party invitation on the nurses' bulletin board that she never heard about; and almost everything around reminds her of loneliness. When she sees him, it breaks her a little bit more.

She remembers a night maybe twenty years ago, on a night like tonight. It may have even been the same day as today, but she has long forgotten this memory. It was her and him, on a Jersey pier during fall break. She remembers the thick salt smell in the air; the breeze was chilled and she wore his college sweatshirt over her thin frame in the dark October night, his eyelashes kissing her cheeks. Now she compulsively touches her face, a whispering reminder of his absence.

He needs her so badly.

Or maybe it's want, but he is thinking it's the former. He doesn't want to lust after her. He does, but he realizes that it is only a side effect of the bigger problem. He wants a friend. He doesn't want the cheap romance he's been paying for. He wants to lie on her chest and listen to her heartbeat. To make her laugh. He wants to wake up and drink coffee with her, make her breakfast perhaps. He wants to tell her he loves her, and have her say it back with finality. He simply wants to be loved.

She's finished her paperwork.

It's almost eleven. The only sounds in the hospital are the distant noise of nurses' rounds and of a humming ER. She quietly takes her gray jacket from the hook, locks her desk, turns off her light, and makes her way out of the clinic and to the front doors. She doesn't notice half a head, stock still, trailing his eyes to her in the blackness.

He follows.

Even through all the years, through the infarction and the healing and Stacey, he has always had this nagging sense of something gone in his life. It is like he is half enraged at her, for leaving him, for giving up on him, and half obsessed, hanging on to her, drunk with love for her.

She feels him behind her. The limp gives him away. She doesn't turn.

"Cuddy," he says, much too softly, much too tenderly.

She turns, eyes weary but her features kind. He speaks.

"You probably don't remember."

Two hours later, they are sitting on the same pier as they did so many years ago. The wind is dancing ballet, mostly slow and rhythmic but sometimes stinging their faces with salt. She is holding his hand. He strokes her palm with his fingers, but it is so cold she hardly feels it. The drowsiness of the salty air tries its best at lulling her to sleep. The glow of the city is pouring liquid fire into the night sky, but they can point out a few stars just over the horizon. He doesn't speak much so she follows and lets her composure rest. It's just her and him right now. No one around here knows who House and Cuddy are.

The only people around the pier tonight are a tall, handsome college-aged kid and a pretty girl in a Michigan sweatshirt, staring at the stars.

…

Author's Note: I think this is the first story I've thought of, written, rewritten, torn up and rewritten again. I like how it turned out. I'm letting you know I kind of borrowed a few lines from my favorite book, _Blue Like Jazz_, by Donald Miller, and reworded them. I love the line, so I used it. The book is phenomenal; if you get a chance, it's worth buying.


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